The present invention relates to a content transferring apparatus, a content transferring method, and a computer program.
In recent years, information processing apparatuses such as PCs and portable devices with mass storage capabilities including hard disk drives have come into general use. Many users keep and manage large quantities of contents such as music and image data in the storage means of their information processing apparatus. These kinds of data are typically retained as digital data in compressed format such as MP3 or ATRAC. The data may be controlled by cryptography process as needed.
Today, it is common practice for the user to download music contents from music distribution servers connected to a network, such as EMD (Electronic Music Distribution) servers, store the downloaded contents in the storage units of their PCs, and get the stored data transferred to their content reproduction devices such as portable devices (PD) whereby transferred contents are reproduced and enjoyed.
There are a number of so-called jukebox applications for managing and reproducing contents and for controlling data transfer to external equipment such as portable devices (PD). The typical jukebox applications include SonicStage (trademark), SonicStage Simple Burner (trademark), MGIQLIP (trademark), Windows Media Player (trademark), Real Player (trademark), and iTunes (trademark). Each of these application programs is capable of downloading EMD contents and transferring the downloaded music data from the storage units of PCs to devices or media connected to the PCs.
To transfer music data from the storage unit of a PC to a portable device or a medium connected to the PC requires first selecting the contents to be transferred.
Hard disk (HD) drives used illustratively as a storage unit of the PC are noted for their large storage capacities that have been rapidly implemented in recent years. Other storage capabilities available with portable devices (PD) have also progressed significantly in capacity. The advent of such mass storage media is popularizing the practice of extracting not one but a large number of tunes from their sources and transferring the extracted tunes between devices or between a device and media.
Illustratively, iTunes of Apple Computer, Inc., one of the above-mentioned jukebox applications, has a function called Auto-Synch that works in conjunction with iPod, a portable device (PD) marketed by the same company. This function works as follows: when music data is added anew to the content database (i.e., hard disk) of the PC as EMD contents downloaded from their sources or ripped from CDs, the contents held by the PC are compared with the music data in iPod. The tunes found on the hard disk of the PC but not contained in iPod are transferred to the portable device so that the music data between the two devices are synchronized. Auto-Sync thus makes it possible automatically to transfer music data from the hard disk (HD) of the PC to the portable device iPod. Descriptions of this feature are found illustratively at http://www.apple.co.jp/ipod/ (http://www.apple.com/ipod/) and at http://www.apple.co.jp/ipod/autosync.html (http://www.apple.com/ipod/autosync.html).